A Game of Thrones Fan Just Explained How Much Time Passed in "Beyond the Wall"

Warning: this article contains spoilers for Season 7 Episode 6 of Game of Thrones, "Beyond the Wall."

Even though Sunday night's episode of Game of Thrones delivered a whopper of a cliffhanger, fans were quick to point out major flaws in the show's timeline. The resolution of the episode relied on Gendry running to Eastwatch, sending a raven to Daenerys, and Daenerys flying beyond the Wall to save Jon and his men from the White Walkers. It all happened way, way too fast, and some people (myself included) would say it bordered on unbelievable.

But Reddit user mikeCFNI did the math, and he deduced those vital moments took place over the span of five days:

Regarding Gendry, The Raven, and the timing of it all, it makes sense. I'm going to assume since they were looking for a lone White [sic] that they were not going in a straight line from East watch, they were probably going back and forth in a zigzag (rip rickon) so Gendry running at full speed back to the wall, let's say that took about 4 hours. The trip from Castle black to Winterfell is about 600 miles (a little farther from East watch), a raven going full speed (28mph) could probably make that trip in a little over a day. From Winterfell to King's Landing is about A Thousand Miles according to Cersei in S5E6, so it would be about the same maybe a little more from Winterfell to Dragonstone. So let's say it takes the raven 4 days to get to Dragonstone. Dragons on the other hand, I couldn't find much info about how fast they can go. So for the sake of argument let's say they top out with a rider at about 175 mph. So that's about a 12-hour flight straight to Snow Team 6. So the overall time it takes Danny to get to Jon, is about 5 days. This makes sense considering that they had to wait for the ice to freeze over the lake again. Considering that the ice had to support a huge hoard of wights, the ice would have to be around 8 inches thick. Assuming an average temperature of 10 °F (they're not that far north) the ice would be growing at 1.5 inches per day. This works out to 7.5 inches of ice. Guys, the math works out.

Reddit

This might make sense from a mathematical viewpoint, but it still doesn't explain how Jon and his men survived the cold weather that long, even with Beric Dondarrion's flaming sword providing some heat. Additionally, by the time the men make it to the frozen lake, they're carrying very little supplies. I spied one backpack—certainly not enough to last five days andprovide nine men with ample strength to fight off thousands of wights.

One backpack. Nine men. Five days. Nope.

HBO

But ultimately, this isn't the point. It shouldn't have to be a fan's job to explain away a show's plot holes. As one of my colleagues pointed out, the Hound easily could've made a throwaway comment about the amount of time they were stranded on the lake. That could even have been his impetus for taunting the wights with rocks and ultimately setting off the major battle.

“We were aware that timing was getting a little hazy. We’ve got Gendry running back, ravens flying a certain distance, dragons having to fly back a certain distance…In terms of the emotional experience, [Jon and company] sort of spent one dark night on the island in terms of storytelling moments. We tried to hedge it a little bit with the eternal twilight up there north of The Wall. I think there was some effort to fudge the timeline a little bit by not declaring exactly how long we were there. I think that worked for some people, for other people it didn’t. They seemed to be very concerned about how fast a raven can fly but there’s a thing called plausible impossibilities, which is what you try to achieve, rather than impossible plausibilities. So I think we were straining plausibility a little bit, but I hope the story’s momentum carries over some of that stuff.”

Basically, time is irrelevant and you should sit back and enjoy the show despite its flaws. Got it.

Julie KosinDirector of Audience Strategy & EntertainmentJulie Kosin is the director of audience strategy and entertainment at HarpersBAZAAR.com, where she runs the news team and oversees all things movies, TV, books, music, and art, from trawling Netflix for a worthy binge to endorsing your next book club pick.

A Part of Hearst Digital Media
Harper's BAZAAR participates in various affiliate marketing programs, which means we may get paid commissions on editorially chosen products purchased through our links to retailer sites.